burning-woman

Who is She? She is your power, your Feminine source. Big Mama. The Goddess. The Great Mystery. The web-weaver. The life force. The first time, the twentieth time you may not recognize her. Or pretend not to hear. As she fills your body with ripples of terror and delight.But when she calls you will know you__e been called. Then it is up to you to decide if you will answer.

Together we are learning to move from raw emotion and frozen muscles into a flow which emerges deep from within. We are learning to dance our prayers, bleed our words onto the page, laugh our images onto canvas, build our dreams in the world _ to transmute and transmit the energy of the Feminine through our bodies and out into the world.

Those in the System, would like us to share their belief that all the changes [we are witnessing] are not connected: they are simply anomalies, isolated symptoms to be treated or preferably ignored, before the all-powerful Western capitalist patriarchal model goes on to ever greater heights and grander ejaculations. Most are numb to it, caught in fear, denial or resistance.But we, Burning Woman, know this process intimately. Amongst Burning Women and Men, there is a fierce, quiet knowing that these are both the death pangs of the old, and the birthing pangs of the new.

If we are to be women in power, then it must be power on very different terms. we have to find a new source of energy. New structures of power. Ones that don__ deplete us or our environment. We need to run our lives on sustainable energy.

Often we can get caught in our own struggles, our own small stories, that we forget our place in the larger story arc _ the way that our actions, our choices, our achievements can and will blaze trails for that who come after us, so that they do not have to spend their time and energy re-fighting the same battles.For sure we walk a spiral path, but for generations of women the spirals were so tightly packed that it seemed they were going round in circles _ let us blaze trails so that the path we walk takes in wider and wider sweeps of human experience.Trail blazing is what we do when we find ourselves in the wilderness, with no path to guide us but our own intuitive understanding of nature and our destination. At times we must walk through the night, guided only by the stars. We know when to sit and rest, to shelter from storms, when to gather water, and what on the trail will sustain us and what will do us harm. We are courageous and cautious in equal measure, but we are driven forward, not only by our own desire to reach our destination, but also by the desire to leave a viable way for others who follow. Trail blazing is an art-form. It is how we find paths through what before was wilderness. We push aside braches, or cut them back, we tramp down nettles and long grasses, ford rivers and streams, through the inner and outer landscapes.

Burning Woman is a powerful image. A role model. A metaphor. A warning. A source of power. She is Feminine power incarnate.

Breaking our silence is powerful. Whether it comes as a whisper or a squeak at first, allow that sense of spaciousness, of opening, allow yourself to trust the bottomlessness, and lean into the dark roar which will light up every cell.Though it may start softly, we build in confidence and skills, we realise we do not need to wait for permission before we open our mouths. We do not need to wait for others to make space for us, we can take it. We do not need to read from others_ scripts or style ourselves in weak comparison. We do not need to look to another__ authority because we have our own. Down in our cores. We have waited so long for permission to know that it was our time, our turn on stage. That time is now. Our voices are being heard into being. They are needed.

Standing in the ring of fire, the eye of the storm, the vortex of pain and pressure is simultaneously the most vulnerable and most powerful place to be. Here we embody paradox. We stand our ground and surrender completely. Here we know the full power of the Feminine.

We often fear that the Revolution needed is too big for what we can give.Too much change is required inside, outside.And we are too small.But all that is required is that you step into the truth of your life. And speak it, write it, paint it, dance it.That you shine your light on your truth, for the world to see.And as hundreds, then thousands, then millions do this _ each sparking the courage of yet more _ Suddenly we have a world alight with truth.

In my work with hundreds of women over the past few years a theme has emerged: women__ desperate, unquenchable desire to step into their power, countered by the fear of what will happen if they do. The longing to express the riches inside them, wrestling with the deep terror of being burned by the judgement, hatred or rejection of strangers or loved ones if they do. This fear of being burned is an oddly female one. It is a fear which keeps us small and scared_ but seemingly safe. From the outside this can seem like an overreaction. Both the need, and the fear. But women, it seems, have an innate knowing of what it means to burn_ and be burned. They know the dangers in their bones. And it makes them wary.

We dare not talk of the darkness for fear it will infect us.We dare not talk of the fire, for fear it will destroy us.And so we live in the half-light, Like our mothers before us.Come to the fire, Feel it warm your skin.Come to the fire,Feel it burn in your belly,Shine out through your eyes.Come dance in the fire, Let it fuel your prayers.

It pierced through me like the ray of sun through the darknessAnd I was awakened like the dawnIt hit me just as the lightning strikes in the middle of the stormAnd I'm electrified to the boneFIRE IN MEIt rushed through me like the wind in the cold desert nightAnd my heart is chilled by the fire in meThe fire that guides my wayThe fire that keeps my dreams burning

These are burning times. And they call for Burning Women. Women embodied in their passion. Woman feeling in their bodies. Creative women. Courageous women. Women who have learned to run on a different power source to the world which is falling into flames around her. She has already disentangled herself from the wreckage of the patriarchal culture, so she will not be dazed, confused and disorientated by the systemic changes happening around her. Centred within herself, receptive to the Earth beyond her, she knows how to cultivate from the ashes, she knows how to find the embers to fuel the new fire.Burning Women arise.Our time is now.Our time has come.

The Dalai Lama says that the world will be saved by Western women. Not any women, perhaps not all women, but Burning Women. Women who have stepped out of silence and into the fullness of their power. Angry women who love the world and her creatures too much to let it be destroyed so thoughtlessly for a moment longer.Burning Woman is the heart and soul of revolution _ inner and outer. She burns for change, she dances in the fire of the old, all the while visioning and weaving the new.